1. Adele is in the realms of first name status only (Cher, Madonna, et al), but is actually called Adele Laurie Blue Adkins.

2. The singer stumbled on her influences Etta James and Dusty Springfield when she was looking for a new hairstyle in the Classics section of HMV. But why was she looking in a record store for a haircut?

3. Adele's first taste of the limelight was when she performed Gabrielle's song 'Rise' at her school. Reportedly her mum made her a sparkly eye patch to look more like the singer.

4 She wrote her debut album 19 when she was 19, and follow-up 21 when she was 21. Hmm, maybe there's a pattern emerging here...

5. She had throat microsurgery in 2011, and was advised to give up smoking. But she is quoted as saying: "Smoking is my favourite thing to do in the world." Will there be a Stacey Solomon-style uproar now that she's pregnant?

6. Adele well and truly smashed America with an appearance on Saturday Night Live and a cameo role on Ugly Betty. Oh, and she became the first female singer to top the artist, album and singles list in the same year (2011) on the US Billboard charts. Her album 21, rather fittingly, spent 21 weeks at the top of the charts, which means that she spent 40% of the past year as America's #1 album.

7. Adele has claimed that she is at her most creative when drunk. "A drunk tongue is an honest one in my opinion and the next morning I would read it through with an awful hangover and, in the cold light of day, had to absorb my feelings about myself. I was a bit scared that I wouldn't be articulate enough."

8. Adele has received fan mail from a surprising source: ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. His thank you note praised her for keeping Britons' spirits up during the global economic crisis, in which he called her "a light at the end of the tunnel". How poetic.

9. She has a miniature dachshund called Louis Armstrong.

10. She won six Grammys which were quite difficult to carry, because they have the combined weight of a young emperor penguin.